Jump Cut (3 page)

“All me,” she says. “The real thing. They didn't even have to cap my teeth. And legs? To die for.”

“Uh-huh.” What else can I say? I notice her feet don't reach the ground. I wonder how long this is going to take, and how weird it's going to be. Talking boob jobs in a retirement home isn't really moving things along. Problem is, I don't know what to do to move them along. Kneel down, maybe? Before I can, she changes direction.

“And is that what I think it is?” She pokes her cigarette at the camera bag. She still hasn't smoked any of it.

“It's a video camera. My grandpa wanted me to film us—I mean you—giving me the kiss.”

“What for?”

I shrug again. “So my family can watch it? And think of him?”

She snorts. “Sounds a little kinky if you ask me.”

“I don't know,” I say. I can hear my voice getting a little desperate. “He left me and all my cousins tasks to do. This is mine.”

“The kiss or the movie?”

“Both. So, anyway, if I could just, uh…” I take a step forward.

Gloria Lorraine hoists one marked-on eyebrow over her sunglasses. “Hold your horses, Spunky.”

“Spencer.”

“Whatever. I'm not that kind of girl. First we've got things to do.”

I stare at her. She says, “What, you think I kiss every kid that comes mooning around with a hard-luck story? You've gotta work for it.”

She flicks away the cigarette and hoists herself forward and out of the chair. She's surprisingly fast for an old lady. “Get those bags,” she orders. She slips her purse strap over her shoulder. Beside her chair are a straw beach bag that matches her hat and a plastic bag from some store. As I stare, she grabs a cane that was hooked over the arm of her chair and starts motoring across the patio.

What can I do? I pick up the bags. They're heavy. I follow her along a walkway that runs around the outside of Erie Estates Lodge.

“What are we doing?” I ask.

“Just running a few errands. Where's your car?”

“In the parking lot. Errands? I guess my dad could drive us, but—”

Gloria Lorraine stops dead and doesn't turn around. I have to hit the brakes so I don't run her over. “Your father's here?”

“Well, yeah. He's waiting in the car,” I say to her back.

“Can't you drive?”

“Sure, I can drive. I just—”

“Your grandpa—his father?”

“No, my mom's. His dad—”

“Never mind,” she snaps. She turns around and whips off her sunglasses and glares up at me. Her eyes are brown with little blue flecks, and right now they're hard enough to shrink my gonads. “I thought I told you to come by yourself.”

“Well, I did. He waited in the car.”

She hisses a word I can't believe she knows. “Now I see why your grandpa wanted you to have the camera: to prove that you can do something
right
.” She turns away and lets out a few more F-bombs, then finally says, “All right, come on, come on.”

We pass some bushes and come out at the front of the building. Across the parking lot I can see our rental car, facing away from us. The windows are down and I can hear that Jer's found a classic rock station on the radio. I say, “It's over there.”

“Never mind,” she says, looking somewhere else. A smile cracks her makeup. “We'll take mine.”

SEVEN

A white Cadillac convertible, top down, sits in the shade of the front arch, engine running. “I forgot I asked them to bring it around,” Gloria Lorraine says, hustling toward it. She's pretty spry for a wrinkly. “Come on.”

The Cadillac has a red leather interior. The engine purrs. “You drive,” she snaps, yanking on the passenger door handle. I dump the bags and camera in the backseat and get behind the wheel.

“Come on, come on,” Gloria Lorraine says as I fumble with the seat belt. She doesn't bother with hers, and the warning signal keeps dinging away. I put the car in drive and we roll into the sunlight. The Caddy's the size of a whale, but compared to our family van it's, well, a Cadillac. As we roll past the rental, I'm about to call out to Jer, but I see from the tilt of his bandannaed head that he's probably Z'd out behind his shades. Gloria Lorraine sees me looking and says, “That your father?” I nod. “Why is he pretending to be a teenager?”

I don't know what to say, so I go with, “Are we gonna be long? Because he'll worry if I don't call him.”

“He doesn't look worried,” Gloria Lorraine replies. “And we won't be long—unless you keep us crawling. Step on it! Turn right at the end of the driveway.” She's leaning forward as if she's trying to push the car faster. Or maybe she's just falling over; it's hard to tell.

As I make the turn onto Eriebreeze, I hear yelling back at the Lodge. I'm too busy driving to check the mirror. Gloria Lorraine acts as if she doesn't hear. Maybe she doesn't. There's wind noise and I have to ask her twice where we're going, plus her seat belt alert is still dinging too.

“Thirty-one twelve Lackawanna,” she yells, holding the red hat on with one hand.

“Where's that?'

“What?”

“WHERE'S THAT?”

“It's—oh, hell, I don't know. It's close. Don't you have one of those GBS's?”

“It's your car,” I yell back.

“Oh. Yes. Well, look; there should be one. It's got everything else.”

I scan the dash for a
GPS
. There it is. “I have to pull over to set it,” I tell her.

“Just make it snappy.”

I turn onto the next side street, pull over and punch in the address. The
GPS
fires up and feeds me instructions. It turns out we're only three blocks away. When we pull up at a big modern house, Gloria Lorraine fumbles a piece of paper out of her pocket. “You all have cell phones. Dial this for me.”

The handwriting on the paper is shaky. I get out my phone and punch in the numbers. Gloria Lorraine waves for the phone as if she's ordering champagne. After a moment she barks, “AmberLea? It's Gran. Are you ready? Well, get up! We're here…What do you mean, where?
Here
. Look out the window.” She nods to me. “Wave at the house.”

We both wave. As we do, I hear a funny
thump
from somewhere behind us. I look back to see if the bags have fallen over, but they're still on the seat. Then the front door of the house opens and a girl appears. She looks about my age. She's wearing a faded pink T-shirt and pajama bottoms with what I think is a Winnie the Pooh pattern. It's hard to tell at this distance. She's also got total bedhead: her straw-colored hair sticks out all over the place. She stares at us, the phone still at her ear.

“Get dressed and get in the car,” Gloria Lorraine barks to her. The girl doesn't move, just keeps staring. “Hurry up,” Gloria Lorraine barks again. “We haven't got all day.”

The girl's mouth opens, but nothing comes out.

“It's borrowed.” Gloria Lorraine answers a question the girl hasn't asked.

I say, “I thought you said—”

“Clam up,” she says, without looking at me. I hear another
thump
. She yells to the girl, “Where's the Flexus or whatever it is?”

“Mom took it,” the girl says into the phone. I can hear her without it. “The Mercedes is in getting new tires. Today's her golf day.”

“I know that,” Gloria Lorraine snaps. “It was always her father's golf day too. With redheads.” She rips out another surprising word, then, “So: no car.”

“No.” The girl shrugs. She bats at her bedhead hair. “I didn't know you wanted—and anyway, you know I can't—”

“Five minutes.” Gloria Lorraine cuts her off. “On set in five minutes.” The girl ducks back into the house. Gloria Lorraine shuts my phone, sticks it in her pocket and mutters to herself, “We'll damn well have to drive this one instead.” She turns to me. “Get me my scarf. It's in the straw bag.”

I find the silky yellow scarf at the top of the bag and pass it to her. She loops it under her chin, over her hat and over her shoulder. “There.”

“Uh, can I have my phone back?” I ask as politely as I can. “I don't want to lose it, and I think I ought to call my dad.”

“Listen, do you want this kiss or not? We'll only be a little while. Besides, CB DeMille, you're going to need someone to shoot our love scene. AmberLea can run the camera. And when you speak to me, call me Miss Lorraine. Got it?”

“Okay.”

“Okay, what?”

I sigh. “Okay, Miss Lorraine.”

“Better. If you turn out to be reliable, you can move up to calling me GL. We'll see.”

Thump.

“Did you hear that, Miss Lorraine?”

“Hear what? If she's not out here in thirty seconds, start honking the horn.”

“Never mind.” Maybe I've gotten lucky and a wheel has fallen off. By now, I'm figuring this whole thing is kind of sketchy. If this isn't her car, whose is it? It's all making me nervous. If I was
watching
it, that might be different, especially if AmberLea was superhot and there were zombies…

EIGHT

“Now we're talking,” says Gloria Lorraine. AmberLea is trudging down to the car in skinny jeans, a red-and-white-striped T and flip-flops. She is not superhot. There is not much up top and she's a teeny bit wide for skinnies, but she has a nice face and the bedhead has turned into smooth blond bangs. She has red sunglasses perched up there too.

“AmberLea, this is Spritzer.”

“Spencer,” I say.

“That's what I said.”

AmberLea looks at me with wide, worried eyes. “Hey,” I say. I hear a squeak in my voice. I'm not that great with girls, even though I'd like to be. I try to get tips from movies, but there don't seem to be many seventeen-year-old sex-god movie stars with glasses, braces and a minor acne problem.

“Hey,” AmberLea says back. She tries about a one-sixteenth smile, but even that much is hard to do because she's sucking in her lower lip and her chin is tucked so far into her neck it's practically in back of her head.
Dubious
is the word, I think. She looks as if we're trying to sell her chocolate shoes.

“Hop in the back,” Gloria Lorraine says. “Now.”

AmberLea says, “GL, what's—?”

“You said you'd do something for me today. This is it. And we don't have much time. Skinner here—”

“
Spencer.
”

“That's what I said—is a busy man. His father is waiting for him. We need your help.”

“But you know I can't—”

“I'll deal with it. Get in.”

AmberLea sighs and climbs in back.

“Go.” Gloria Lorraine raps on the dash.

“Where?”

“Amby, guide us. We need a drugstore and a grocery.”

In the mirror I see AmberLea roll her eyes and do an even bigger bite-and-tuck. Then she says, “The Price Mart has both. Turn around.”

I do a not very cool three-pointer that takes us up on the sidewalk a little. There's another
thump
from the back. “What's that noise?” AmberLea says. “Have we got a flat or something?” I want to catch her eye in the mirror and give her an
I wish I knew but I'm not in charge here
look, but I'm too busy missing a fire hydrant. By the time I look back, she's got her shades down.

AmberLea directs us to a big supermarket. All the way there, Gloria Lorraine tells me to hurry up. When we get there, she has me park in a far corner, by a Dumpster. She gives AmberLea cash from her purse, and a shopping list. “And make it snappy,” she says. “It smells like hell around here.”

It is pretty ripe. AmberLea and I get out of the car and start across the parking lot. It's even hotter here than in the parking lot at the Lodge. We don't look at each other. The automatic door lets us into air conditioning that doesn't make me feel one bit better. AmberLea grabs a cart and, still without looking at me, says, “So what's going on?”

“Um, well, I wish I knew.” And I wish I was Johnny Depp too. “Your grandma said she would help me make this movie for my grandpa, but she said before I could make the movie we had to run some errands, and she got really mad when I told her my dad had driven me here, but her car was all ready to go, so we came to get you so you could film us. Sort of.”

I don't think my speech helps. AmberLea's chin has now completely disappeared. I'm betting her eyes are wider than ever, but I can't tell because she still has her sunglasses on. I guess it runs in the family. She says, “I don't know what you're talking about, but I can tell you two things: it isn't her car, and she always gets what she wants.”

“But,” I say, “it was out front, with the engine running.”

“People do that at the Lodge sometimes, when they're dropping someone off or picking them up.”

“You mean—?”

“All I mean is, the faster we do this, the faster we get the car back and get this over with, the better. I'm, uh, not supposed to be out right now. What's on the list?”

We get the economy-size Dependables adult diapers, five bananas, a little cooler chest, a bag of ice, Vega-Thins crackers and a pack of Marlboros. AmberLea doesn't say a word. At the checkout, I take a shot at conversation. “Your grandma moves pretty fast for a smoker.”

“She doesn't smoke them,” AmberLea says, as we pick up the stuff. “She just likes to pose with them. Don't ask me why.” We walk back out into the heat.

NINE

You can hear the thumping from quite a ways off. Gloria Lorraine is standing at the back of the Cadillac, waving us over. “Open the damn trunk.” She pokes her cane at it like a sword. I dump the stuff I'm carrying into the backseat and go to find the release on the dash. Behind me, the thumping gets faster and harder. “All right, all right,” Gloria Lorraine says.
Whack
goes the cane on the trunk lid. I find the button, pop the lid, then hustle back. You can see little dents in the metal from the cane. I swing the trunk open.